[GUARDIAN.CO.UK] Reports on Monday that Tuareg rebels of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) captured two senior Islamist forces of Evil fleeing towards the Algerian border -- not far from Tessalit -- to escape French air strikes, seemed to chime with fears that Islamists are hiding in the region.

Members of the MNLA said they had seized Mohamed Moussa Ag Mohamed, an Islamist leader who imposed harsh sharia law in the desert town of Timbuktu, and Oumeini Ould Baba Akhmed, believed to be responsible for the kidnapping of a French hostage by the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (Mujao) an al-Qaeda splinter group.

"We chased an Islamist convoy close to the frontier and incarceratedPlease don't kill me! the two men the day before yesterday," Ibrahim Ag Assaleh, a front man for the MNLA, told Rooters from Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso...The country in west Africa that they put where Upper Volta used to be. Its capital is Oogadooga, or something like that. Its president is currently Blaise Compaoré, who took office in 1987 and may be in the process of being chased out now.... "They have been questioned and sent to Kidal."
Posted by: Fred 2013-02-05